


Goodbye Dad

by Sinclaironfire



Category: Onward (2020)
Genre: Barley is four, Canonical Character Death, Deathbed Goodbyes, Dying Parents, HERE'S SOME ANGST, Hospitals, childhood angst, hospitals are scary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:07:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23054449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinclaironfire/pseuds/Sinclaironfire
Summary: Barley is four. His father is dying and hospitals are a scary place.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 80





	Goodbye Dad

**Author's Note:**

> A new fandom and new angst to spread! I love Pixar.

Hospitals, Barley decided, were a very scary place.

The stark white walls, the smell of disinfectant in the air, how cold everything seemed to be was a major disconnect from the fresh and warm and colorful world outside. Out there, everything was green and alive. In here, everything was dying. 

He didn’t know about Death. Not the real kind anyways.

He saw his cartoon heroes and his storybook characters evade death time and time again without fear or worry. Death was bad…Barley knew that much. He knew that it looked painful and at people did very desperate things to avoid it. When people did die, like on the television, it was very sad. People cried a lot. 

Kinda like how his mom was doing right now. 

Eyes as big as the moon, Barley glanced over to the hospital room where his dad had been staying for the past couple of months. He’d seen his mom cry, his pop cry, and he himself had cried a lot over those long couple of months. 

It was really scary making these constant trips to the hospital. Everything was quiet and loud all at the same time. The people looked really serious and looked at him funny. They knew things that he didn’t. Things that made his mom cry a lot. 

“Barley?” His mother appeared, her eyes red and fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “Honey, it’s time.”

It’s time. 

He’d heard that a lot over the last couple of months. It’s time…it meant everything and nothing. “It’s time to go to preschool”, “It’s time to go to bed”, and now… “It’s time to say goodbye to your dad”.  
Barley scooted off the hard-plastic seat in the hall. His mother smiled at him although her lower lib was wobbling hard. She ushered him into the room and he saw his father in bed….or some creature that resembled his father. The man (was it even an elf?) in the bed, wasn’t blue. He was very pale and he was breathing heavily. There were tubes in him with different colored fluid going in and out. The machine that was attached to him beeped incessantly. It sounded like a bomb ready to go off. 

Barley took one single step forward. He opened his mouth to question if the man (was he still alive?) was his father. Instead, the man in the hospital coughed and hacked and gasped for air. Each breath that he took truly sounded like it might be his last. The man, with great effort, turned his head. A weak smile spread across his face. 

“…Barley…” he gasped.

The tears came instantly for Barley. The man sounded like his dad, but it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. His dad didn’t look like that. His dad smiled a lot, he was a bad dancer, he wore ugly purple socks, and he had…he had life in him. The man in the bed didn’t have any of that. Barley cried and cried and cried as hard and as loud as his tiny body would allow him. That wasn’t his dad in front of him. He wanted his dad right now. But his mother came. She scooped him up and whispered sweet calming words to him. Tiny Barley hiccupped and gasped but couldn’t face the man in the bed. He wasn’t his father. He wanted his dad right now. 

“I’m sorry, honey.” She placed a kiss on his forehead. “Say goodbye to Daddy, okay? Wave bye-bye. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Tomorrow never came.


End file.
